American corporate visions of millions of Chinese consumers buying goods across international borders remain a dream.

A minority of privileged Chinese who have worked abroad and have US dollar bank accounts and credit cards can readily shop online from the likes of Amazon.com, but most buyers are ex-pats.

Analysts see much greater hope for online trading to take off in the business to business (B2B) sector.

Rather than China's huge population buying foreign goods online, it seems the boom may come from foreign firms purchasing made-in-China goods to sell back home.

Money for most deals must still change hands offline

Edward Zeng is the founder of Sparkice, which sources everything from traditional ladies fans to footballs, hiking clothes and office supplies from a database of Chinese manufacturers.

It quality checks suppliers before allowing them to bid for contracts online.

In July, Sparkice says, it found suppliers for more than $1m of office equipment for a US firm in just two hours.

"China is the new centre for sourcing globally," says Sparkice founder Mr Zeng.

Business-to-business

Whereas EachNet had annual sales of $7m in 2001, Sparkice is projecting turnover of $100m next year, though Mr Zeng is more reticent about current sales volumes.

But it too does most of its payments offline.

"It's hard to talk of pure online stuff... You might find a supplier, but there'll be a lot of offline involvement in any transaction" says BDA China's Mr Clark.

The B2B sector faces other hurdles.

To work well, B2B needs broadband, but turf wars between government ministries are dampening take-up. China has only 2 million broadband connections, according to CNNIC.

EachNet believes its online auctions are breeding new entrepreneurs, as traders start small and get bigger. "They can use our sales listings and start businesses they wouldn't be able to offline," says Mr Fagan.

Huge numbers and even bigger predictions abound.

The value of e-commerce will rise from $479m in 2000 to $26bn by the 2004, says IT analysis firm IDC, using a generous definition that includes any purchase where the internet was used to find out about a product.